Johnny Manziel Image Repair

By Katie Moore and Tara Nunley

Abstract and Intro

• The study concludes that Manziel has taken steps in the right direction, but has not yet been successful in repairing his image.
• He entered rehab in January 2015
• He had multiple racy tweets and social media posts.
• Slept through practice after being out all night partying.

Literature Review

We will focus on image repair case studies like that of Michael Phelps’s after he was photographed smoking a marijuana pipe (Walsh 2011). Manziel and Phelps are both household-name athletes who have at one point struggled with substance abuse. Similarly, we will review Terrell Owens who, like Manziel, has trouble balancing his personal life with his public career (Brazeal 2008).

Michael Vick, a fellow well-known NFL player, was convicted for dogfighting and gambling (Meyer 2008). We will use his case to reference an athlete in a similar position of fame. Finally, we will look at a conglomerate of cases involving the MLB and players’ use of steroids (Meyer 2007). These cases parallel Manziel’s substance abuse pattern.

Research Questions

RO1: What image repair strategies did Johnny Manziel use in his social media forums?

RQ2: How did the mainstream media respond to the scandal and Manziel’s image repair strategies?

RQ3: How effective overall were the image repair strategies that Manziel used?

Methods:

We looked at 500 out of 3,774 tweets. He has not posted since he entered rehab in January, but we paid close attention to the posts around December 29, 2014. He missed practice due to a hangover. We also looked at 50 Facebook posts from the last year. He has not posted since November 2014. We analyzed different media articles about his rehab involvement and his mistakes: “Johnny Manziel Enters Treatment” (espn.go.com), “NFL Quarterback Released From Rehab” (time.com), “Johnny Manziel Takes Big Step Towards Comeback” (NYPost.com), “Trouble with Johnny Manziel” (espn.go.com)

Findings and Discussion

Johnny Manziel’s case is similar to that of many professional athletes who have made mistakes. His differs a little, however, from each case we studied. Michael Phelps’ incident was a one-time thing; he didn’t have the image of being a “bad boy” or having a substance abuse problem. Manziel’s reputation has had a rebellious undertone since his high school football career. He has made mistake after mistake throughout college and into his NFL career (Walsh 2011).

Terrell Owens and Manziel actually have a lot in common as far as their reputations for being self-centered. However, Owens demonstrated hostility toward the media, his team and his coaches when the Eagles refused to renegotiate his contract. His attempt at a reparative press conference failed. Manziel’s demeanor is not necessarily significantly hostile toward anyone (Brazeal 2008).

Michael Vick’s dogfighting seemed to offend people more deeply than Manziel’s incidents. Substance abuse seems to be more commonplace than something like dogfighting, so the news was alarming. He had a more difficult time winning fans back than Manziel will (Meyer 2008).

While Manziel recently checked himself into a rehabilitation center for alcohol abuse, he has not been found to have taken steroids like many of the MLB players we studied.

This tweet was posted before he announced his decision to enter the NFL draft or stay another year in college; clearly he had already made his decision.

This tweet was posted after Manziel was photographed gambling in Las Vegas with Drake.

This tweet was a reaction to watching his former Texas A&M football team losing badly in one of their regular season games.

Manziel has taken action by recently releasing a statement apologizing to his fans:

“I would like to thank my family, friends, the Browns organization, my teammates, and Browns fans everywhere, for your patience, understanding, and support during my stay at Caron. The doctors and staff have been amazing and what I’ve learned in the last couple of months has been tremendous. I owe private apologies to a lot of people that I disappointed but a very public one to the Browns organization and the fans that I let down. I take full responsibility for my actions and it’s my intention to work very hard to regain everyone’s trust and respect. I understand that will take time and will only happen through what I do and not what I say. I also understand there’s a lot of curiosity about this but anyone who has a friend or family-member that’s been through things like this knows it’s an ongoing process. I’m going to continue to ask folks to try to respect my privacy as I determine to what degree I am comfortable talking about a subject which I consider very personal. Most of you have been considerate about that and I thank you for it. I look forward to seeing my teammates next week and focusing on football and my desire to be the best possible player, teammate, and man that I can be.”

We are glad he finally released a statement, but would have suggested he not ask for privacy. Instead, he could have just left the fact that he will answer what he can and avoid questions that make him feel uncomfortable.

Image Repair Table

 

Tactic	Characteristic	Johnny Manziel
Denial	I didn’t do it	Yes
Evading responsibility (Made no comments or effort to apologize at first)	I will not acknowledge that I did anything wrong	Yes
Defeasibility	I couldn’t control myself	Yes
Accident	It was an accident	N/A
Good intentions	It meant well	N/A
Bolstering	I’m a good person; I do good things	N/A
Minimization	It isn’t so bad	Yes
Differentiation	I’m not angry, I’m under duress	N/A
Transcendence	My actions were true to my beliefs	N/A
Attack the accuser	They framed me	Yes
Compensation	I will pay for my error to those I hurt	N/A
Corrective action (Entered a rehab facility)	This will not happen again	After rehab
Mortification (Released a statement apologizing to fans)	I am wrong and regret my actions	After rehab

Limitations

• We could only look at a small sample of Johnny’s tweets and Facebook posts.
• A portion of his inappropriate tweets had been taken down.
• The long-term effects are unknown because he just got out of rehab a few weeks ago.

Conclusions

• Johnny Manziel is on his way to reparing his image. People seem to be willing to give him a second chance now that he is out of rehab.
• Johnny is so good at football that he hasn’t done anything too harmful to completely destroy his image.